Martian Furniture
by TheBigBlackHat
Summary: Five people who claimed to hate the weird furniture in the Hermes break room and one person who actually did.


Beth really doesn't know what the people at NASA or JPL or wherever were thinking when they designed the Hemes break room. Someone must have taken a time trip back to the seventies to come up with it, because that's sure what it looks like. Unlike the rest of the ship, desinged to be as comfortable to the astronauts as possible (read: still not very comfortable), the meeting room gives the exact opposite impression. Molded plastic chairs of all things. They're bent at the exact angles that will leave her back aching for hours after sitting in them. If she can sit in them at all, that is. Whenever she tries, she feels like that old late-night host, Conan, slipping every which way in one of those chairs in an ad on TBS. Really, it's not worth the effort. So she sits on the floor at team meetings. Much better.

After they get Watney back, Lewis stops calling crew meetings in the break room and moves them to Beck's clinic, and everyone is relieved. They all assume she hates the stupid break room as much as they do. She doesn't tell them it's just the opposite. She likes the design of the room, likes what it reminds her of: the seventies, disco, her husband. And while that makes her smile a bit, it also makes her sad and a little emotional. In her normal life this might be alright, but currently she is leading a mission to Mars. It doesn't take a genius to realize that emotional does not mix well with that. Luckily, the problem has an easy solution; a good majority of the crew hates the break room and Watney, in his current condition, is liable to break a rib again trying to get to it. Beck's clinic it is.

Mark doesn't mind the break room all that much, or at least he didn't before it reminded him of his time on Mars and the Music That Shall Not Be Named ( in his eyes, the seventies are just one giant clusterfuck). But what really bothers him is the lighting. The fact that there is none, specifically. He's sure the idea of the grew talking by starlight sounded wonderful to whoever designed the damn thing, but in reality? No bueno! So yeah, the lighting in the break room is shit, just like nearly everywhere else on the ship. At least his lab has light, enough for his plants (yay!) to perform photosynthesis. So he hides out there most of the time. That's where they start doing crew meeting anyway, after Beck kicks them out of his clinic (all Martinez's fault, by the way). In the end, though, Mark really doesn't care. It's not Mars. That's all that matters.

Beck's not all too wild about the official break room (too many hours spent massaging Johannsen's back after meetings and planning sessions), so he doesn't mind when Lewis moves the meetings to his clinic. It's the next logical place, after all, and it's much more comfortable. Also, this way he doesn't have to worry about Watney hurting himself trying to get to the break room. It's alright with him, at least until Watney and Martinez start acting like four year olds with the medical supplies. Beck kicks everyone out after that, except for Watney, who's still injured, malnourished, and probably liable to sprout another head at any moment from all the radiation he's been exposed to. Beck realizes that getting kicked out was probably Mark's objective in all of this- the man's getting a serious case of cabin fever- so Beck tries to make it up to him as best he can. He suggests to Lewis to move crew meetings to Mark's lab. It's a win-win: Mark gets a change of scenery and Beck gets revenge when Martinez messes with Mark's plants instead of Beck's supplies. Dr. Bossy Beck 1, Martian Man 0.

Vogel, well, Vogel doesn't really know how to feel about that break room. He's never seen much furniture like that in Germany, so more than anything, it's just another thing that feels a little alien to him. He supposes that makes sense; they're on a journey to outer space, shouldn't alien fit right in? But the thing is, Vogel doesn't really want alien, all smooth, shiny plastic and curves that really shouldn't belong on chairs. What he wants, floating in space 140 million miles away from home, where only twelve people have ever gone before, is familar. He yearns for the straight-backed hardwood chairs of his grandmother's home in Kunzelsau, chairs that still smelled like the forest they were once part of. They say you miss the strangest things, and now Vogel knows that's true. But Vogel doesn't tell anyone any of this; he knows everyone else is just as homesick. The most he says on the matter is a foul joke alluding to the oddly shaped design atop the break room table. Watney and Martinez's jaws drop at Vogel's deadpan uttering of the lewd phrase, and no one can look at the tabletop for weeks afterward without blushing bright red. Just one more reason to do crew meetings somewhere else.

Rick swears he didn't start it. Honest to God, it was Watney with his stupid cabin fever (all Beck's fault, of course) that came up with the idea. And honestly, who was Rick to deny Watney some fun after a couple hundred days alone on Mars? The fact that Mark was feeling good enough to joke around like that was enough to make Rick smile all day long. Despite the fact that people think he's a complete joker, Rick was actually a little serious about this. It was wonderful to see Mark actually laughing, just as much as it was hilarious to see the look on Beck's face when he saw what Rick and Mark had done with his supplies. Rick will get kicked out for that any day. Besides, just about anything is better than that stupid break room, which everyone (so he's heard) hates anyway. Who knew astronauts hated the seventies so much? For that matter, who knew spacecraft designers loved the seventies so much? He'll add this to the list of things to invest in for a few years when he gets back to Earth. Everything Ares-related is all the rage right now; they've got to be making money off of this somehow. Yup, Ares publicity is how he's going to put the kids through college. But at the moment, he needs to go mess with Watney's plants a bit- Beck bribed him to.

The heart of the matter: Despite all the noise to the contrary, no one really hated the weird furniture in the break room all that much, except that they all realized at some point that there were six weird chairs and only five astronauts to fill them with.


End file.
